On a good note

>> Woody Allen gets Sweet and Lowdown

by MATTHEW HAYS

 It has been convincingly argued that nostalgia is, in essence, a state of depression. Fitting, then, that Woody Allen, cinema's leading depressive, would again wallow in nostalgia for a time gone by with his latest mockumentary, Sweet and Lowdown.

 The annual offering from the prolific Allen is steeped in a longing for the early days of jazz, specifically the dirty '30s. As with Zelig, Allen has created a well-rounded fictional character, this time a jazz guitarist, Emmet Ray, played brilliantly by Sean Penn.

 Giving his casting extra punch by playing on our off-screen knowledge of his leading man, Allen has Penn play a talented but wildly self-centred artist who can't control his temper and drinks excessively. A vagabond who can't hold down a gig due to his binge drinking, Penn's keen drawing of this split-personality character allows for humour and pathos at once--one of Allen's basic hallmarks.

 Penn gets his kicks by stopping off at the junkyard and shooting rats, usually while bombed. This is also the pastime he treats his various dates to, and their reactions to his enthusiasm for the sport make for typical Allenesque laughs.

 By and large, though, this film is not of the gag-per-minute Allen variety. Instead, Allen gives Penn one of his best roles yet, a role Penn is deservedly getting accolades for. His Ray, a bruised, emotionally stunted man, is at once repulsive and endearing. His relationship with the mute girl Hattie (Samantha Morton, in another one of the film's excellent performances) is tormented by his vanity, self-obsessiveness and general indifference. It's in this romantic attachment that we see the essential Ray, a character who Penn makes us feel is real, despite the film's constant comic reminders (mock-ups of that doc staple, the talking head) that he's fiction.

 Grounding the entire film and matching his nostalgic streak is Allen's choice in music. Howard Alden performs the guitar that Ray is supposedly playing, and the soundtrack is as sweet as the film itself. Both music and film effectively transport you back to the decade, culminating in one of Allen's most satisfying--and unapologetically maudlin--films of the past decade. :

 

Sweet and Lowdown opens Friday, January 28